Portland Timbers 4-0 Los Angeles Galaxy: Of Victory and Flexibility

The MVP of second assists.

In an attempt to keep this short (that failed; caveat lector, and is that name taken?), I’m going to use the counter-arguments to describe the Portland Timbers 4-0 submission hold over the Los Angeles Galaxy, here, in the fourth round of the U.S. Open Cup. Yes, at least three of the Timbers’ goals loitered in the neighborhood of lucky and, no, that was nothing like the Galaxy’s best team out there. My response to that is, so what? The fact that wasn’t LA’s best team only matters in terms of what Portland has to handle next time they play LA; the deeper story is that Portland played whatever LA threw onto the field straight off of it – and without fielding every one of its regulars, and that’s your context.

From the time Sebastian Blanco scored Portland’s third, and only fully intentional (and yet still fortunate), goal until the end of the game, the Timbers played cat-and-mouse with LA. For instance, somewhere around the 70th minute, and after a period of flinging the ball forward looking for the next goal, Portland collectively pulled back and steadily passed the ball backwards first, then all over the field, just holding it. I guesstimated the sequence at around 20 consecutive passes, but a full composed minute passed before LA got back on the ball. And then Portland chased LA off the ball again – or LA passed/pissed it away – the whole thing started all over again.

Dame Fortune might have kissed every one of Portland’s goals more or less closer to the lips (and Blanco’s was straight-up tongue), but the Timbers very deliberately wrecked the havoc that lead to each of them – whether by Blanco’s ball over the top to Jeremy “Broadside of” Ebobisse that caused the second goal or the slick combination between Tomas Conechny and Jorge Moreira that ended with the ball falling to Blanco for Portland’s third. As for the fourth goal, I only submit it for the record: after a brief pressing rally around the 2/3 mark of the game, the Galaxy slipped into a stupor for the rest of the game. Another useful deflection, another goal, game, set match, Portland.

That’s the entire narrative thrust of this game, really. Once the Timbers put the Galaxy in the soccer equivalent of a figure-four leg-lock over a 10-minute period in the first, this was 50 minutes of LA failing to find any solutions. Waiting on a tap-out that the rules of the game doesn’t allow, basically, and that means waiting for the final whistle to bless the inevitable. While you’re hear, though, I’ve got three bigger picture ideas to pass on, both about this game and the Timbers as general. In no particular order…

How You Play Out of Pressure
To paraphrase a couple things I tweeted in-game, Portland figured out how to pass out of, then through, the Galaxy’s pressure by about the 30th minute. To that point, LA had been able to stick someone one Diego Chara, maybe the fullbacks, to prevent the third pass out of the back. Once the Timbers figured out how to break that, they rendered LA’s defensive scheme more or less meaningless. That’s why that 70th-minute mattered so much: Portland was in command to the extent that they didn’t have to worry about scoring anymore; and with their passing clicking at the level it was, it felt like they could hold possession till next weekend. No, this weekend. At any rate…

When Portland gets in a rhythm, they can play. Even with a defender lurking, just about every player on the roster knows how to take his first touch beyond that defender’s control; if it’s not that, it’s knowing where to find the next pass with one touch: whether by talent or training (or a wealth of Latinx players), this current group of Timbers squad has this capacity. And, in my experience, the teams that really thrive need that in their tool-kit. The teams I see that are…just bad tend to be the ones who don’t look comfortable playing the ball into tight spaces; it's a lot of playing to space "for guys to run onto," which is loser-talk for, "my players have no close control." I’m talking less about the back-to-goal work that can be vital than touches on the ball that get your players looking forward with the ball at their feet. I hinted at the usual candidates through the use of “Latinx,” but there’s another player in tonight’s XI who does it just as well.

Ebobisse Enigma
Jeremy Ebobisse had as good a night as Brian Fernandez and, yes, I’ll fight you. My real point is, each of those players brings different skill-sets to the game, but they both have skillz.

If you ask me which player I want running clean into a 1-v-1 with a ‘keeper, Fernandez is my man. If you want a player who makes challenging runs all day long (he pushed LA's defense deeper all night), and who manages tight spaces and tricky balls well 7 times out of 10, and who makes defenders’ lives tricky hell, that’s where I like Ebobisse. The analogy is rough, but he strikes me as a forward in the Quincy Amirakwa mold, only more technical upside in every aspect but finishing. In so many words, Fernandez is a forward and a goal scorer, while Ebobisse is a useful mystery. At this point, I can’t see sitting, never mind trading Ebobisse. So long as Portland can work with a system where Blanco, Fernandez and Diego Valeri do the scoring, you don’t really need Ebobisse to score.

I don’t know. Is it fair to say Ebobisse’s more foil than forward? (And is that so bad?)

MUP
Watching Blanco drop deep to receive the ball tonight reminded me how much he’s done that since joining the team. He’s got the legs to do it, if nothing else, and that’s why I’m hereby dubbing Blanco Portland’s “Most Useful Player,” aka, its MUP. Chara remains my MVP – and he reasserted his claim to the throne all night tonight – but Blanco’s engine and talent allows him to help on both sides of the attack in a way that no other Portland player can do at the moment. He can receive the ball deep and, from there, combine up the wing just as easily as he can wail a long diagonal to the opposite side of the other team’s defense. This has upsides all over the field – e.g., when he drops deep, Blanco becomes a third outlet after Chara and Cristhian Paredes, and now that’s three guys and how does a team stop that? He’s just as at home in the attacking third, whether firing from range or orchestrating an over-load…

…I’m just saying, now that everyone’s on the “Chara MVP” train, it’s possible that Blanco has become Portland’s most underrated player.

Shhh…
Paredes slipped into tonight’s narrative late, but that’s appropriate seeing as I’m quietly as happy about him as any other player on the roster this season. All I can say is that the kid has kicked out all stops since the start of 2019, and he looks fantastic on both sides of the ball. His passing is assured and steady, and he plays a passable attacking ball, but, more than anything else, I’m starting to see him assert himself all over the field. Because he seems to defend via positioning, he’s less glamorous on the defensive end, but seeing him look more and more comfortable going forward hints of a Timbers’ team that can throw real, overwhelming numbers forward when it needs to. And that's nice.

One final note on Chara: nothing amazes me like his timing. Swear to God, that guy has a seventh sense as to when to start closing on the ball, and it’s a pleasure to watch.

Well…shit, that wasn’t short. I have some stray notes left over – e.g., Claude Dielna didn’t put a foot wrong tonight (while Larrys Mabiala put a couple wrong late), and Conechny might have finally shown me how people stay so high on him with a line-breaking run up the gut – but I covered the big themes above. More than anything else, Portland has almost as much talent as it has options. I can’t guarantee this year will end well, but I’m less nervous about transitioning to the next generation than I have been for a while. The End.